Paddy Chayefsky went pretty far with his screenplay for 1976’s Network, a satire that depicts network executives so ruthless they arranged an assassination on live TV. But even he probably never imagined a figure not unlike the movie’s Howard Beale, a man willing to say dramatic and shocking things on television and attract a following for it, becoming president.

But watching Network in 2020, as the hosts of the Little Gold Men podcast did this week as part of the ongoing Little Gold Men Essentials rewatch series, they couldn’t help but notice the Trump parallels, and all the other ways the movie still feels incredibly prescient about how television shapes our culture.

This week’s episode also includes a conversation between Joanna Robinson and Anthony Breznican, in honor of May the Fourth, looking back at the legacy of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Finally, Richard Lawson sits down virtually with Hong Chau, the star of Watchmen and Downsizing whose new film, Driveways, is a small but acclaimed indie about an unlikely friendship between a young boy and a Korean War veteran, played by the recently deceased Brian Dennehy. Chau, who plays the boy’s mother, said she didn’t even have to look at the role before agreeing to it—she was so impressed by the first feature film by writer-director Andrew Ahn, 2016’s Spa Night, that she would have done just about anything to work with him.

Listen to the episode above, and find a partial transcript of the Hong Chau interview below. You can find Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Vanity Fair: Well, I’m so pleased to be on Skype at the moment with the star of the upcoming film Driveways, Hong Chau. Hong, thank you for being with us, I understand, this is your first quarantine interview.

Hong Chau: Yeah, as of even just a week ago, I didn’t think I’d be doing any press during this pandemic, but I guess they just quickly figured out how to do everything and so I’ve just gotten a flurry of emails, just in the last couple of days about doing press, so I’m happy to be here, I thought that Driveways would just kind of quietly go into the night and I’m glad that I have this opportunity to talk about it.

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Well, it’s an interesting time for the industry. Obviously, a lot of things are shut down and a lot of big movies have had to delay their releases. The silver lining, I guess, is that it gives us a film like Driveways, which is a small, intimate indie film, a chance to maybe breathe a little bit and be shown to more people, I hope.

I hope so. It’s not a flashy movie, it’s not being distributed by one of the larger indie companies, so it was going to have an uphill battle in any case. But I think with things being the way they are, maybe it’ll have a little bit more eyeballs, more ears, just because people are at home and there’s still plenty of things to take away your attention or grabbing for your attention, but I think maybe with the mood that people are in, a movie like Driveways might really speak to people.

Can you talk a little bit about the origin of you being in the film?

Yeah. I got an email from Andrew Ahn, our director, with a letter and the script, and my manager at the time was trying to explain and prep me like, “Oh, it’s this guy…” And I was like, “Oh, I know exactly who Andrew Ahn is.” I had seen his first feature, Spa Night, at my local cinema and I really loved it and I just kept him in my head and I saw that he wasn’t really getting enough attention or press for that first feature, which was a shame because I thought it was so well done and just really special. So I was thinking like, “Oh, I hope this guy gets to make another feature.” Because I know how hard it is for indie filmmakers, even if you’re really talented, you’re not really guaranteed that next opportunity. So I was really excited to get that email from Andrew.

And, honestly, I didn’t really even need to look at the script or the role to sit down and have coffee with him, which we did and we talked for like three hours and he’s just so darling and likable. I don’t know what it was, but I just felt like I wanted to make sure that this person gets to have a really nice long, beautiful career and I just wanted to help him in any way that I could. So I just said, “Yes, I’ll do this. I don’t really care what the script of the story is.“ It was a well-done script, I don’t want to not give credit where it’s due, but honestly, my major and sole reason for working on the project was Andrew.

When a movie or a TV project is super high concept, I would imagine that’s kind of easy for a director to describe to an actor what the film is going to look like or sound like. But with this, which is smaller, more gentle, and more sort of feet-on-the-ground in the human realm, what were some of the early conversations you had about the sort of aesthetics of the film or the feel of it? Because it’s so closely observed that I’m curious if that’s just something that is conjured on the day of shooting a particular scene or if that’s kind of a conscious decision that you had from the outset.

I think it had a lot to do with the budget and it being so small and not really having a lot of resources. When things are bare-bones in terms of just physically what’s available to you and the size of the crew that’s available to you, things just get really focused and really small and everybody who wants to be there really wants to be there. It’s not like we were getting paid so much money and that the craft service was so wonderful. It was really a labor of love for everybody involved and the spareness that works really well that you’re talking about, is really hard to do. I think that’s really Andrew Ahn’s signature, is that he has such a light touch, but there still is a feeling of momentum and energy and a strong voice within all of the gentleness of everything.

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You’ve been able to work on some bigger projects like Downsizing or Watchmen, but also smaller, more independent things. I’m sure that both hold their own appeal, but for you as an actor, do you tend to do think, like if you had your pick of the litter in terms of what you could do, do you think you would gravitate toward the sort of smaller, more interior things? Do have a taste in either way?

No, I’m really open to anything as long as—it just has to not be boring. There has to be some little seed of curiosity or something that interests me. In this case, it was working with Andrew, but I’m not necessarily in terms of acting looking to only do really small, grounded, naturalistic things. I would love to do something really big and bombastic as well. I don’t know what that would be, because I think with the way that movies are going, you really only find those bigger performances that are allowed in those tentpole movies, which is kind of a shame because I love watching older movies where the performances are a little bit more theatrical and they’re a little bit bigger and it just works really beautifully. We’ve kind of shied away from that now where the style of acting or the acting style that people appreciate now is a little bit smaller in some ways. And I don’t think that naturalistic necessarily means that it’s better than something that’s more theatrical and bigger.

One of the interesting things about making Driveways is that you’re working a lot with a young actor, Lucas Jaye, who plays your son Cody in the film. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to work with someone that age and what kind of dynamic exists on set when you’re trying to create this very credible mother-son bond?

Well, it’s funny, not only was I working with a child, but I was also working with Brian Dennehy who is on the other end of the age spectrum. In terms of having to adjust for their needs, their individual needs, it was kind of similar. For Lucas it was his first movie and he had done, I think, episodic work like Full House or something like that. So he’s worked before but he hasn’t really done a feature film or things that weren’t quite so contained the way maybe a children’s show might be or a sitcom like Full House.

So there were things like having to hit your mark, but not really understanding, oh, this is the frame and this is the speed that the dolly is moving. So there are things like that that he just didn’t know yet and so we would do a ton of takes of that, of just him trying to walk up to a window and land on a certain mark. So we would do 14 takes of that and I would do two takes of mine and that was just how it was. It’s like, okay, I’m going to do two takes and then we’re going to do 20 takes of whatever, of this other thing. But that’s equally necessary and important to making the film. So you just have to roll with it and be able to do that without feeling like I’m being put upon in some way.

It really was fun to get to work with Lucas, not that I needed to explain anything to him, I think he caught on pretty quickly, but it’s just nice to be able to work with people at different points in their career. We talk about wanting to see progress and diversity and all of that and I just think that it’s really great that somebody at his age gets to work on material like Driveways and have that be the foundation for his career, which I think will be long because he really enjoys acting.

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Yeah. I mean it’s a kind of a nice reflection of one of the film’s themes about generational exchange and learning things from each other—more experienced people and novices, whether that’s at acting or just at life. I think it makes sense that that was kind of the experience of working with a younger actor. But I am also curious about the Dennehy of it all. We recently lost him, which is a shame, but he was this incredible, just lion of the American stage and obviously did a lot of great film and television work. What were your interactions with him like on set?

I was shooting another film right before, another indie, and so they started about a week before me, and it was Brian and Lucas working together for that first week. And then I came in and he is just, god bless him, he’s such a strong presence as a person, as a human being. He loves to tell stories and just crack jokes, a lot of them are really terrible, but he would just keep cracking jokes anyway and he loved being on set.

But the other side of it, because I don’t want to sugarcoat it, is that he was old, and this was two summers ago that we shot Driveways and it was really physically difficult for him to do the movie. But he really wanted to be there every day and that’s just inspiring for somebody like me to see. Because there are people my age and who you get the sense that they don’t really actually want to be doing their job. So it was just really wonderful and an honor to work with Brian Dennehy on one of his last roles, which I think is just such a wonderful role for him and he was really beautiful.

Yeah. I think in particular of the lovely scene at the VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars post], where it’s Cody’s birthday and everyone’s playing bingo and there’s just this really natural kind of rambling rapport between you and Dennehy and Lucas, but also the other actors in the scene, that feels very natural, very conversational. I’m curious, is it work to get to that point where you guys can just kind of exist together?

I think it just depends on the people that you’re with and the chemistry that you have. Working with Lucas it was my first time playing a mom and having to work with a child actor and so the parents have to be involved and be on set. But Lucas’s mom was so great because she was so hands-off. She was there, but she was tucked away somewhere, so I would be able to just talk to him and be able to have my own relationship with Lucas. And he’s a very, very chatty kid, even though the character that he plays is a lot more reticent and just a little bit self-doubting, but he’s not that way at all. And so we had a really nice relationship when we weren’t doing scenes and just being able to talk to each other and there was that ease and comfort there, and the same thing with Brian.

What are you watching during quarantine?

Honestly, I’ve mostly been watching the news or reading the news, because I feel like at the very least I have to bear witness to the terrible job that’s been done with the handling of all of this. It doesn’t make me anxious, but I do feel like I just need to stay with it and know what’s going on. I mean, I will squeeze in some reruns of like Seinfeld between news segments. But the last thing that I watched, I did a double feature, was Paper Moon and What's Up, Doc? and that was really great. Those are both wonderful

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That’s so interesting, you’re not the first person to tell me they watched What's Up, Doc? during this period.

Actually, I’d seen Paper Moon several times before, but I hadn’t seen What's Up, Doc? and I remember I had a conversation with Joan Cusack, who I adore, we worked on Homecoming together, and she has a gift store in Chicago named Judy Maxwell Home and she was like, “What? You haven’t seen What’s Up, Doc?” And I was like, “No. I haven’t.” She said, “Oh, you’ve got to see it.” So I was thinking about Joan when that came up.